"smartphones" articles
More good news for consumers from MWC. While Apple finally allows Sling Player app on iPhone, Verizon Wireless announced that Skype will be made available to its customers. Previously, the VOIP solution provider had a hard time convincing mobile carriers in North America to allow its app to appear in app stores or embedded on the phone, now the first truce is made (if you don't count iPhone's support of Skype on Wi-Fi). Which carrier will be the next?
Scanning through the press...
In a sign that mobile operators begin to recognize the downloadable mobile apps market as a viable opportunity and view the handset makers’ aggressiveness in this area as a credible threat, twenty-four operators announced their Wholesale Applications Community initiative today at the MWC event in Barcelona. We warned as early as in our November 2008 industry report "mobile Imaging" that operators need to come up with counter measures to prevent others from using app stores as a...
Mobile ad company Crisp Wireless has introduced a fixed placement unit for smartphones that stays onscreen as a user scrolls up or down on a mobile Web page. The new "Adhesion" ads support rich media formats like expandable, tap-to-call and tap-to-video as well as the ability to share, close or save, or ad content via email or social networks.
But what if users aren't so enamored of the in-you-face factor of the new ads? A Crisp Wireless spokesman emphasized that people...
Adoption of non-text mobile data services has exceeded 40% of the more than 70 million U.S. broadband households with a mobile phone service, according to Parks Associates’ new consumer study Mobile Convergence: Platforms, Applications, and Services.
Over one-fourth of mobile service users have adopted mobile Internet and e-mail services, eclipsing other mobile data ARPU drivers like mobile TV and music, indicating that carriers will have to win subscribers through more...
Consumer demand leads to almost 20% annual growth between 2008 and 2013--
The consumer appetite for smartphones is skyrocketing and will push annual sales worldwide from 131 million units in 2008 to over 300 million by 2013, according to international market research company Parks Associates .
The firm’s new report Mobile Services: Global Outlook finds consumers are attracted to these converged devices because they combine practical and entertainment applications into a mobile...
Revenues for mobile advertising in the U.S. and Canada will grow from $208 million in 2009 to approximately $1.5 billion by 2013, according to the new Parks Associates report Mobile Advertising: Analysis and Forecasts. Adoption of smartphones, 3G network data plans (or newer wireless services), and downloadable applications will spur this growth in ad revenues, with significant increases beginning in 2010.
Parks Associates estimates there were 62 million smartphone users in North...
Two well-known Taiwan-based IT companies now collaborate to jump into a new market that already has too many power players. Asus Computer and GARMIN announced yesterday that they will co-develop, co-brand and co-market new smartphones under the name GARMIN-Asus. Their first smartphone is apparently the long-delayed Nuvifone that GARMIN has been trying to launch since 2Q08. Compared with GARMIN, Asus has a better track record. The company had its first PDA in 2001 and introduced its first...
When I posted my last blog about Android’s market traction, I left out a name: Dell Computer. According to today’s Wall Street Journal, Dell is close to completing the design of an Android-based smartphone. Dell’s spokesperson declined to comment on specifics, saying the company “hasn’t committed to anything.”
Should Dell count on smartphones to revive its sales and brand? The smartphone is a hot product category, but Dell is a newcomer to the mobile phone space. It...
